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For the first time last month, I managed to miss a monthly update! Things have been CRAZY round here and time has been precious (and I’ll be honest sometimes when I have an hour or two to myself, I use it to aimlessly scroll through Instagram or just sit and watch television!). People told me the first year with two under two is the hardest but honestly they’re both at (cute but) exhausting ages right now!

Max is 14 months old now and is doing really well, as ever, we are massively proud of him.

He’s got nine teeth (or maybe ten by the time this is published as I’m writing this a couple of days in advance and one bit of his gum is so lumpy there must be a tooth just under the surface ready to escape!)

He’s cruising super confidently, getting better at standing independently and taking the occasional step by himself. Who knows, by next month we may be reporting back that he’s walking. But it may take a little longer, we’re in no rush.

Max is insanely good at climbing, just like his sister has been from an early age, and now takes anyone opening the front door as I sign that he should bolt out there and crawl up the drive as fast as he can – it’s a good job we don’t have a door that opens out onto a busy road!

Food-wise he’s doing really well, we have a few food trials left to try but it’s mostly stuff we’re fairly confident he’ll pass and also mostly stuff we don’t eat often at home so that’s why they’ve been left til last. We had a failed soya trial a couple of weeks ago that resulted in mountains of poo and horrible sleep. We have to keep trying though so no doubt there’ll be future updates about that. Portions are huge! He can eat and eat and eat.

His sleep is still very variable. We seem to have a few days where he’s really good and we start feeling like we’ve cracked it, and then all of a sudden he goes back to being a real pickle overnight! I must say, he’s back to settling himself when we put him down to bed which is fantastic after weeks of having to rock him to sleep like a newborn. But as I say, we’ve been through this cycle multiple times before and by the time this comes out we might be subject to hours of rocking and hours of watching Netflix at 2am again.

I’m not sure what he weighs at the moment as he hasn’t been weighed recently, but he’s moved into 12-18m clothes, although some of it is a little baggy.

When he’s not tired or hungry, Max is just the happiest little boy! He likes to get on his knees, clap and do this weird ‘jumping’ thing where he goes across the floor on his knees! It’s very funny and cute. He absolutely loves giving kisses and he still likes his hugs too.

Words-wise he is definitely saying yes, mommy, daddy, nana, banana, ta, there and digger. He also says something that sounds like Alex (without the x, same way his cousin says it!).

Not going to lie, I am slightly freaking out about the fact my tiny little baby is one in under three weeks!

I feel like he’s really progressed in the last months and has come on leaps and bounds. We are so proud of him. I know everyone is proud of their children, and I know a lot of children have things going on which affect every single aspect of their lives in a much more profound way; but our little boy has faced every challenge with the biggest smile on his face and to look now at his pictures in the very early days when he was so tiny, fragile and poorly: he’s unrecognisable now. We’ve never shared any of the pictures of him when he needed help breathing or was having jaundice treatment or was surrounded by wires (I think the earliest ones which have gone on social media or here are when he still just has his feeding tube in), but looking back at them now shows us how strong Max was and is! He’s a dude.

So, having looked at last month’s update there are a couple of quick things to say and then certain things I’ll go into in more detail:

Three new teeth, making a total of five!

Sleeping really well – we’ve had two nights where he’s not stirred at all for around 12 hours and most of the other nights it’s only been once or twice for his dummy. We need to get rid of it soon but I’m trying to put it off for a little longer! (Except I wrote this last week and then we had a couple of awful nights thanks to cold number 27464749 of the winter)

Routine is pretty much the same except he’s dropped his 11am bottle so just two left now.

He’s pulling himself up to standing and climbing constantly now! He can go from lying down to sitting up and has also cracked sitting up totally now. Still commando crawling although he can move forward for about a second on his hands and knees before going back to commando style again.

The first thing I wanted to talk about a bit more extensively is his speech. We noticed from very early on he had a great range of sounds and ‘talked’ a lot more than his sister did at that age. I’m still not totally sure he realises what certain words mean but he’s definitely learning that he gets a reaction from saying sounds at particular times. Having said that, in the last week or so Max is saying ‘daddy’ a lot when Dylan comes in the room or in his general direction, and he doesn’t say it to me, so it could be that he’s learned who daddy is. He also says ‘hiya’ a lot which is super cute (especially when accompanied with very enthusiastic waving) and ‘yeah’. I’m totally okay with him saying daddy first, especially when I hear ‘mommmmm mommmmm mommmm’ a trillion times a day from his sister.

And lastly, the big one with Max is always how his food is going! In his ten month update, we were trialling pear which was a pass. Also added to the safe lists this month are some really good foods: rice (so handy as it opens up some cereals and rice cakes as well as – of course – rice itself and he LOVES it), banana (again handy for snacks, he eats an entire one at a time because he loves them so much) and eggs (a high risk food but another great one for him). We have a tentative pass on chicken because it caused some nappy issues (although we are now thinking it could have been teething?) but no sick so we think it might be okay but will need to keep an eye on it when he has it in future. Last week he passed oats – this was on the request of the dietician who thought he could benefit from more calcium so he’s been having Oatly custard – and beef. This week we’re doing peas and then in a few days we’ll try corn.

We saw the dietician two weeks ago and she was very pleased with him – he’s got a very long list of safes in their eyes and is passing medium and high risk foods which is great news. They want him to trial dairy in hospital when he turns two rather than at home, which would be my preference too and they also want him to carry on having formula until he’s two. He now weighs 18lb 4 which is still on the smaller side but he’s putting weight on consistently so they are chuffed with that!

10 months old! I am still firmly pretending Max is a newborn (and his nappies still say newborn on the pack, so I must be right yes?) but he is in fact much closer to being a toddler than I care to admit!

Teeth: Two! And lots of rooting round as if there’s a new one coming through pretty soon.

Sleep: This has got a lot better since my post a few weeks back about how awfully he’d started sleeping. We’re now firmly making sure he goes down at around 7pm but no later than 7.30pm which seems to help and we’ve moved his afternoon nap later so he’s not overtired in the evenings. On average, we get up about 5 times a night now but it’s without fail just to put his dummy back in and maybe some teething gel on – fingers crossed we’ve had a couple of weeks now where we haven’t had to rock him back to sleep or spend hours trying every method under the sun to get him to settle.

Routine: Up about 7.30ish but can be later, breakfast around 8/8.30, nap around 10-11, bottle at 11, lunch at 1, bottle at 2.30/2.45, nap around 3-4/4.30, dinner at 5, bottle at 6.30, bed at 7ish.

Food: Max is doing amazingly with his food trials so we’ve reduced the last couple to six days with the hope of reducing further to five days for each new food. We now have 18 safes (lamb, salmon, pineapple, apple, plum, peach, blueberry, strawberry, avocado, cauliflower, broccoli, carrot, parsnip, tomato, white potato, sorghum, wheat, coconut milk/yoghurt). Wheat has been a great one for him to pass as it’s opened up some bread to us (only specific ones as most contain soya, but it’s nice to see him chewing on a bagel!) as well as different cereals, pasta and cous cous. We’re trialling pear this week and also trying to concentrate on introducing some finger foods (using his safes, so giving cut up fruit or some bread) as well as cutting up food rather than giving it pureed so he gets used to more textures.

Bottles: Max now has a bottle of expressed breast milk (5oz/150ml) in the morning then two bottles of formula, I switched his afternoon one from EBM to formula in readiness for me stopping pumping next week – with the stash I’ve got in the freezer it means he can continue having one bottle of EBM each day until his first birthday. If he’s still needing a follow-on formula at this point (I think they’ll recommend that) then I’ll feel okay that he had some breastmilk for an entire year.

Lungs: We are thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that we had a follow-up appointment and X-ray at the hospital where he had his operation and his right lung has expanded massively since his last X-ray in June. That means his diaphragm is pretty much where it should be and there’s no evidence of reherniating. The surgeon was so happy with him, he doesn’t want to see Max again for another year. I mean, I know we all like to share how great our kids are doing when they hit their milestone but growing your lung capacity by almost double in six months is pretty special. Well done Maxi!

Playing: Max definitely has a preference for ‘hard’ toys over cuddly teddies. He loves sharing his sister’s Lego blocks, tea set and cars. He also has an inflatable farm-themed ring from his cousin which he absolute delights in climbing in and out of. Oh yes, we have another climber. He’s discovered he can get over things now so I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before I’m rescuing him from high up places – it’s like raising a colony of monkeys sometimes.

Three quarters of a year! Max is now nine months old which means it’s time for another monthly update about what he’s been doing and the new skills he’s learned. I’m finding it really interesting to go back and read what I was writing about Alexandra at this point in her development (her nine month update is here) – not because I want to pit them against each other but just because you forget so much, even in the space of 18 months, and it’s hard to remember that she didn’t pop out as this walking, talking, sassy toddler. Anyway, I digress. Onwards with the update:

Teeth: I’m starting here because there’s actually something to report! Max has one tooth now and potentially the corner of the second – although he won’t let me near to check properly. His sister didn’t pop one through til nearly 11 months so it was a surprise to me when his came through a couple of weeks ago. However, also in contrast to Alexandra who never seemed overly bothered with teething aside from a few restless nights, Max is really struggling. If all of them are like this then we’re in for a long and tiring ride!

Sitting/crawling: He’s been practising lots and can now sit for a few seconds unaided but he’s definitely not at the point where he can be left to it. Max’s crawling is also coming along and he’s able to get around really quickly with his commando type crawl on his belly. He does now get on to his hands and knees occasionally for a few seconds so he’s making progress in the right direction.

Playing: Max loves playing with his sister’s Lego and cars, some pom poms (I think I spoke about them in his eight month update but he still loves them) and still spends time in his jumparoo and bouncer. Among his Christmas presents were a Nuby police car with lights and sounds which he loves, and some little sea creature themed soft building blocks which he’s also enjoying.

Eating: We had some really good progress with that this month and have passed three new food trials bringing him up to a total of 13 foods I believe. New on the menu since the last update are lamb (which we thought he might have reacted to previously), salmon and pineapple and we’re now trialling white potato which is slightly higher risk but we think would be a good addition to his diet. So everything was going as smoothly as it can with an FPIES baby until he had an accidental exposure to dairy on Boxing Day. Unfortunately half a teaspoon’s worth was enough to send him to A&E as he was as white as a sheet, very lethargic and vomiting like nothing you’ve ever seen. Luckily after a while there must have been nothing left in his stomach at all and after a sleep he woke up looking much brighter so they let us go home. We obviously didn’t record any of it as we were focused on him but I almost wish we had so we could show people who are likely to be around him and food how ill he can get from just the tiniest bit of cow’s milk.

Sleeping: You know when you write a blog about people’s reactions when you say your kids are good sleepers – and then karma turns round and bites you in the bum? Max’s sleep has been awful since he had a bout of bronchiolitis a month or so ago. We made the transition yesterday from our room to the nursery (as his sister has now vacated it for her big girl room) and he lasted until half 10 before I brought him back in with me after getting up six times in the preceding half an hour. He seems to want different things each night: sometimes it’s clearly his teeth bothering him, sometimes he wants a cuddle, most the time he will settle a bit more if he’s in the bed with us but sometimes nothing works at all. Dylan wants to just leave him in the nursery to cry it out but I’m concerned firstly that he just wouldn’t settle and the long-term effect of that, and secondly that if he wakes Alexandra we then have two crying children to deal with (third reason would be we’re not exactly getting any more sleep than we would be if he was crying in the same room as us.

So that’s the round up of his nine month update. Let’s see what this month brings!

Last week, I posted about the early days of weaning Max and promised an update so voila! To go back and provide a quick summary from the start: at five weeks old, Max was readmitted to hospital as he was pale and lethargic. When we got to the children’s ward, his temperature was low and he’d lost around 11oz I think it was in three days, during the evening his poos were getting paler and paler until they were completely white. They tested his blood which was too acidic and started giving him medication to reverse that. Initially they thought he may have sepsis, or have an underlying liver or kidney condition as the tests they’d done had also shown up problems with both of these. Eventually they decided he had FPIES, a type of allergic reaction which is internal and can’t be tested for. It takes a couple of days for an FPIES reaction to show up and it can mimic the symptoms of sepsis; there are four reactions ranging from mild to moderate to severe to life-threatening and his was deemed as the high end of severe.

So we cut out all dairy and soya. Last week I talked about introducing soya (we’re not trying dairy until he turns one) and how we think he’d reacted to that. Two days later, he started being sick a lot. He’s got reflux so we’re used to him being sick a little (and Alexandra was the Vomit Kid despite having nothing medically wrong with her), so we’re well used to a little spew. But this was severe. It seemed like every half an hour he was being sick. Otherwise he was completely well, so there was no cause for alarm. But on the second day we started scratching our heads trying to work out why, our initial thought was soya, but the sequence of events didn’t make sense. We also considered whether having his flu jab had caused it, but again it didn’t really make that much sense. I scrolled through the food diary I’ve been keeping for him and realised the only thing we’d introduced in the previous couple of days had been wheat in the form of cereal in the morning.

We didn’t give him any wheat starting from the Monday (after a weekend of vomiting) and he’s stopped being sick as much. We still get the odd tiny bit but nothing like those two days. I spoke to his paediatrician later in the week who confirmed that was the right course of action and we should leave it a couple of weeks then try soya first, wait for a reaction or not, and then try wheat once we’ve established the soya situation.

It’s a bit of a bugger really. We’ve gone from knowing it’s unlikely he’ll ever tolerate dairy and being hopeful that he’d be able to have soya (we were told a third of babies who are FPIES to dairy also react to soya) to now thinking dairy, soya AND wheat could be totally off the menu. For a couple of days he ended up basically back on fruit and vegetables and then I spent ages searching the shelves of Asda for some different options for him. There are choices out there which is great, but I find many of the dairy-free alternatives contain soya and now wheat is an added complication! We’re going to look into the possibility of getting a bread maker as free from bread is so expensive! And I’m sure there are other ways we can give him a varied diet without breaking the bank – we’re meeting with the paediatric dietician next week also so they’ll be able to help further.

But for now, it’s the daily task of trying to get some tasty food into him and wondering whether every bit of sick, irritable behaviour or dodgy poo is a reaction or just part of normal baby life. Plenty of people have said ‘oh maybe he’ll grow out of it’ (probably going by their experience that a lot of babies who have other conditions do) but the doctor has firmly told us he doesn’t think Max will ever tolerate dairy judging by how small he was when he reacted and how bad the reaction was. Either way, I’d prefer to prepare myself for the worst possible scenario of life-long allergies and then we can be pleasantly surprised if one day it turns out he’s grown out of it!

Max turns seven months old today and I think there’s been a real difference in him during the last month. Looking at his six month update, he was only really starting to get to grips with rolling – whereas now he flips from back to front and vice versa all the time. He’s also able to commando crawl along the floor so he’s easily moving around the room. Gone are the times where you’d put him down and he’d stay in one place!

He doesn’t seem to have as much interest in sitting up, he’ll do it supported but he’s not really trying hard to do it unaided. I remember with Alexandra, she’d constantly be trying to pull herself up into a sitting position if we lay her down, but it doesn’t really seem to bother Max. At this rate, I think he’ll be crawling before he sits!

He was weighed a few weeks ago and was 14lb 1, so he’s probably still 14 something. Clothes wise, we’ve just moved up to his 6-9m stuff as everything else was getting too short. He’s a long baby but still very skinny so everything looks a bit baggy. He’s still in some of his smaller t-shirts and his 0-3m coat still just about fits him! But he’s definitely making progress and going the right way with everything.

No teeth yet, but I’m fully expecting a late teether if he’s anything like his sister. His hair is growing back beautifully and he’s still very blond, although I’m sure it’ll go darker over time as no one else in the family is blond.

Weaning has been, and continues to be, a challenge! Poor Max is very into his fruit and veg and is always keen to try new things – but as much as he likes food, food doesn’t seem to like him! I’ll update more soon but wanted to share his rough daytime routine: wake up any time between 7 and 8, breakfast and bottle at 8/8.30am, nap around 9.30/10am, bottle some time late morning, lunch around 1 but can be any time between 12 and 2 depending what we’re doing, longer nap in the afternoon, bottle some time in the afternoon, dinner around 5.30/6, then a bath every other night, bedtime routine, bottle around 7.30pm.

Max is incredibly vocal, he ‘chats’ away constantly and sometimes likes to talk to himself early morning in the Moses basket which is incredibly cute. He’s discovered he can do a weird clearing his throat/cough thing and also that he can scream very loudly. It’ll be interesting to see whether his speech develops well or if it’s just these early noises that he’ll be so competent with.

He’s got an MRI next week which should (fingers and toes crossed) be the last time they need to scan his brain. I can’t remember how much I’ve updated about that on here, but essentially post surgery they detected an area they thought may be a bleed on a cranial ultrasound. He then had an MRI when he was a couple of months old at our local hospital where they (and the radiographers at the more specialist hospital they checked with) concluded it was probably just an anomaly in a blood vessel, which wouldn’t affect his development. They suggested a follow-up MRI done under sedation so they could just confirm – if they think again that it’s this vessel anomaly then there’ll be no need for further tests. Max then goes to see the dietician the week after where they’ll be able to give us some advice about his allergies. Then we’ll await an appointment at the hospital where he had his surgery for them to do another chest X-ray and see what his diaphragm is up to these days.

For a baby who’s had quite a lot thrown at him in his seven short months here, he’s absolutely lovely and he charms everyone he meets! He’s a wiggler, a giggler, a smiler and a joy to be around. Yes he has his moments! But on the whole we are super proud of our little boy and how well he’s withstood all of the challenges which have come his way. Hopefully next month we will have some positive news regarding his brain and then we don’t need to worry about that!

Well hello there. Things have been, shall we say, patchy when it comes to blog posts lately. In the past, I probably would have apologised but I’ve been thinking about it recently and actually I create content here for myself and for my children to look at when they’re older, so if I miss a few Tuesdays or Thursday here and there, it really isn’t a big deal! There are a million ways I could be kinder to myself, and not beating myself up about doing something entirely optional is one of them.

Anyway…on to the actual post.

Weaning.

We are now a few weeks into the weaning process, which began the day Max turned six months. I wasn’t 100 per cent sure he was ready as he’s still not sitting up independently and he hasn’t yet got the pincer grip necessary to pick up smaller items, but he’s actually taken to eating very well. We decided to give purees rather than go down the baby led weaning route, mostly because that’s what we did with Alexandra so we stuck to what we knew, but also partially because I wanted to know he was having a consistent amount of food when we started trialling soya.

For the first two weeks, Max just had pureed vegetables twice a day at lunch and dinner. He got on great with those, and there was only really parsnip which he didn’t seem to enjoy. Then we introduced fruit which he absolutely loves. As soon as you give him fruit he’s wolfing it at great speed. He’s now having three meals a day – a couple of times he’s tried pureed versions of what we’re eating but mostly he’s having separate meals, although eventually all his dinners will be the same as ours (blended less over time until he’s eating it in the form we do).

We then started to introduce soya, which is what had been advised by the paediatrician. The aim was to give soya every day for a month, at which point we could say with certainty that Max wasn’t allergic to it (when he was diagnosed with his dairy allergy, we were told there was a one in three chance soya would also affect him. At that point, we were advised to cut out soya as well as dairy to allow him to get well again). The first three days were fine and then on the third day, he started being sick a little more than usual. It wasn’t a horrific amount, but then on the fourth day he seemed a bit lethargic and his poo also started changing (sorry for TMI). This continued on the fifth day so we stopped soya altogether. The plan in that scenario was for Max to be soya-free for four weeks and then we can try again, just in case the initial reaction was actually down to something else.

I feel like it’s pretty inevitable that he’s going to start showing symptoms when we re-introduce, which is a shame as I was really hoping he could have soya. There are so, so many dairy-free alternatives out there but a vast proportion of them contain soya. So if he reacts again and doesn’t grow out of the allergy (which his doctor doesn’t think is likely), then it’s really going to narrow down his options when it comes to food – and to eating out especially. It’s a real shame for him. Food is so integral in our society: birthday parties, Christmas, family meals, sleepovers at friends’ houses. Having never had allergies myself, it wasn’t until I had to go dairy and soya free to continue expressing for Max that I realised how lovely it is to be able to go to a supermarket and have your pick of anything on the shelves, rather than scouring through the ingredients of everything, double checking just in case, and then basically eating whatever you can rather than what you want.

I’m going to update on his weaning journey next week probably, as we have had more ups and downs this week already and I think there will be more to report by then!

(You know when you think you’ve posted something then suddenly remember at 4.30am while expressing that you totally didn’t? I can still use the baby brain excuse, right?)

Tuesday was a milestone in our house as the baby turned six months. Yes, Mr Max has been around for half a year now – and what a half year it’s been!

He’s doing so well and we’re really proud of the leaps he’s taking each day and the new things he’s learning. Of course, anyone is proud whenever their child achieves something but considering how poorly he was we often look at his progress in amazement!

Weaning:

I will no doubt post many times about his weaning journey, but I can’t update you at six months without talking about food. He’s not sitting up unaided yet but we decided to try him on some solids when he turned six months to see how things go. We’re doing the traditional purée route as well as giving him some bits and bobs to try and pick up and gum and starting off with two weeks of just veg before moving on to the fun stuff like fruit and the really fun stuff (carbs).

Development:

Max is a little wriggler and he’s very confident at getting from his front to his back. He can roll from back to front but spends a lot of time on his side and somehow managing to move across the floor using a complication system of lying-down lunges and half rolls.

His head strength is much better and he’s also enjoying being sat up more, although he still needs some support with that. He’s now reaching out and grabbing toys and he LOVES bouncing in his jumparoo and being on his playmat surrounded by toys.

Routine:

It’s still 150ml bottles every three hours from 8am to 8pm roughly. He’s up any time from 7am and is the chirpiest morning person I’ve ever met. He’s just started having solids at 12pm and 6pm. Naps are variable but he tends to have one approximately 9.30am for anywhere up to an hour, then another one mid morning or early afternoon then perhaps another one before dinner.

Growth:

Max is set to be weighed next week so we’re not 100 per cent sure how much he weighs but he’s definitely gaining so that’s positive. He’s fitting most of his 3-6m tops now although a lot of them are still a little baggy. He’s about ready to go into 6-9m babygrows in the next couple of weeks and he’s also rapidly outgrowing most of his trousers. Unfortunately we either have the option of horrendously baggy waist and the right length or less likely to fall down but way too short when it comes to his trousers! He’s still very skinny and people are quite surprised when I tell them he’s six months.

We think he may be teething as there’s a lot of dribbling and hand chewing going on, but I feel like Alexandra did this too and she was nearly 11 months before her first tooth came through so we may be in for another long wait if he takes after his sister!

–

All in all, he is still so happy and cheery. Yes he has his grumpy moments and he cries and he grumbles (don’t we all) but if he’s fed, not tired and not in pain from his reflux then he is just the loveliest little boy. The kids do this thing where most days at least once they lie together and get the absolute giggles and just spend five minutes laughing at absolutely nothing. Looking at them and how much they love each other is honestly the best feeling and makes any and all of the hard bits of his pregnancy and the early days more than worth it. I wish I could share that moment with anyone worrying about having two babies close together!

Our lovely Maxi is five months old this weekend – this is the first time I’ve done an update on him separately from his sister’s but she turns two next week so I’ll be doing a special post or two on that and then I’ll be reducing the frequency of her updates, probably to just two a year, although I’ll clearly still mention what she’s up to in other posts I write.

But back to Max, out of interest I just looked back at Alexandra’s five month update (not in a ‘comparing to see which child is better’ way but to see what she was up to at this point). She was majorly interested in hands and feet – Max hasn’t found his feet yet but has spent most of the month chomping away on his hands.

Their routines are roughly the same except she slept in a little later in the morning and went to bed ever so slightly later – and she was having a whopping 210ml five times a day, compared to Max who has 150ml. However it’s importantly to remember Alexandra’s feeds were all formula and only one of his is, and everything I’ve read suggests breastfed babies consume less. Plus he’s smaller too.

So what is he doing this month? There’s a lot of chatting and smiling. He loves to interact and is a real people watcher. He’s generally very contented! Max is trying to roll but hasn’t managed it yet and his head control is getting stronger by the day.

His doctor at our local hospital is very pleased with him and we’ve now got a weaning plan in place, which I shall share the details of once we get to that point.

Overall he is just the most delightful little thing to have around and he’s completely added to our family on the best way possible!

Way back in May I wrote a little about how Alexandra’s weaning journey was going (here) and promised I would come back at some point with an update. Now I’m not even sure we can call it weaning anymore as she’s a full-time eater, no-milk drinker? But anyway, here’s a post about Alex and food:

A girl after my own heart, she absolutely loves food and has never refused anything that’s been put in front of her. Her favourite is anything bread-related, I think she’d live on bread if we let her. She definitely loves her treats but is also very good about eating vegetables, fruit and anything healthy.

I can’t say how often I’ve felt thankful that she’s completely taken eating in her stride and we’ve had no major worries with her up to now. I’m sure that may change and she could end up being one of those teenagers who only eat chips. But for now, on the eating front (and the other ‘biggies’ like sleep) we’ve been hugely lucky. I feel like this will trip us up at some point when we’re not expecting it (I guess the next big hurdle is toilet training, maybe it’ll take her til she’s 15 to learn how to use a potty?)

A lot of the time, she prefers to feed herself which basically leaves a scene akin to just throwing the bowl of food over the carpet and walls. But at least she’s having fun right? If we give her a spoon with food on it she (mostly) can get it in her mouth. We haven’t really attempted to get her to actually put the food on the spoon but I guess that’s the next stage. We’ll be stocking up on even more 1001 carpet cleaner (other brands are available) before doing so. The plastic mat I bought from Poundland when she started weaning has saved us from a lot of heartache so far!

So, all in all, a positive report there on a baby who LOVES her food – but it’s okay cause thigh rolls on babies are cute!